


Blinded by Silence

by WallflowerBitca



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, OB, also almostsex, it's mature because sexual references, payback bitch, plus - Freeform, propunk - Freeform, serious ouchy angst, this is for youuuuu bijane
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 16:02:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2856803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WallflowerBitca/pseuds/WallflowerBitca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rachel and Sarah... they have so much to offer one another. And so much to take. <br/>Rachel finally lets someone else pick up the fragments of her life - but even she doesn't know how sincere she is. Post S2 Propunk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blinded by Silence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BiJane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BiJane/gifts).



> To my darling Bijane. Ha.
> 
> Also, set directly after 2x10.

Moving her head, Rachel Duncan felt a stabbing pain behind her left eye. She tried to open her eyes, but only the right moved. She groaned softly, raising a hand to her face. There was a patch covering her eye.  
“How are you feeling, Ms Duncan?” It was a lackey. Some voice that was familiar, though she didn’t know – or care – which meaningless member of personnel he was.  
“Leave.” Her voice had a quaver. And she hated it.  
“But Ms Duncan…”  
“ _Leave.”_  
Christ… her eye… Sarah Manning, the goddamn pencil…  
It hurt. Wrong. So wrong. Pain… she inflicted it. Not felt it.  
Forcing her un-punctured eye open, she looked over the side of the crisp, white hospital bed she was on. Her clothes were folded neatly on a chair, bloodied, and her shoes were on the floor. They were spattered scarlet.  
Rachel felt her stomach drop. That wasn’t her blood.  
That was little Kira Manning’s bone marrow.

Sarah was finally letting herself break down. Her body shook with sobs, and she pressed her fist into her mouth – she couldn’t let them know, let them hear… Cosima was mere feet away in the lounge, pale, relying on tanks to breathe. Waiting for something that Rachel Duncan destroyed.  
The marrow was gone. And Cosima wasn’t going to make it another bloody six weeks for Kira to get the aspiration redone.  
Though honestly, could Sarah really do that to her baby again? Even to save her sister?  
She collapsed against the wall of Felix’s bathroom, holding herself together with her own arms.

Rachel had her cell phone in her hand. She punched in Sarah’s number.  
Then she deleted it.  
Punched it in again.  
Erased the digits with shaking fingers.  
Once more… and she pressed dial.

Sarah’s phone buzzed against her hip. _Bloddy Hell._ She reluctantly pulled it out of her pocket. _Rachel_.  
“Piss the fuck off.”  
She cancelled the call without picking up.

“Christ,” Rachel pressed her lips against the phone, letting her breath fog the screen and clutching it tight enough to mask the quiver in her fingers. “ _I’m sorry_.”  
That little girl… she didn’t want to hurt her…  
How could you hurt something like that? Someone. Someone so small and innocent, who had no concept of what her life was to be like. Kira Manning wasn’t born with a purpose, or a barcode. She wasn’t spawned in a test tube, wasn’t randomly selected from a line-up of petrie dishes and cautiously implanted. Kira Manning was born of Whiskey and Passion and stupidity.   
Perhaps that was why Rachel was letting herself hurt Kira, hurt Sarah. Because she’d been given a life path, self-awareness and goals. And she hated to watch anyone else float with the innocence of the Mannings. Or even Hendrix or Dr Niehaus.  
Rachel Duncan was a professional, aware, intelligent woman. She did not float. She was already tethered.

  
Rachel’s phone buzzed.  
A message appeared on the screen… ‘IF YOU’RE THAT PISSED ABOUT YOUR BLOODY EYE, THEY CAN DAMN WELL GROW YOU A NEW ONE IN A PETRIE DISH.’  
Her reply, simple. ‘THAT’S NOT WHAT’S BOTHERING ME, SARAH.’

 

 

Taken aback at Rachel’s reply, Sarah sank down on the edge of the bathtub. What…?  
  
“Sarah, where are you going?!” Alison caught her by the arm as she walked out the door blindly, phone in hand.  
“Out.”  
“And where exactly is out?” Felix drew up behind them. “In case you’d forgotten, we’ve got a poorly dressed psychopath on the loose again.”  
“Helena’s not a psycho, Fee.”  
“Sorry, murderous nutjob,” he said dryly.   
“You’re not going after her.” Alison crossed her arms. “I won’t let you.”  
“I’m not going to Helena,” Sarah replied honestly. “Just, leave off, it’s alright. I’ll be back. Take Kira to the chippy for dinner when you pick her up, eh?” She pressed a twenty into Felix’s hand and – without waiting for a reply – walked out the door.  
“Felix,” Alison said curiously, “what’s a chippy?”

* * *

 

“And here was I thinking you’d walk in here with a gun, Sarah,” Rachel winced as she sat up straighter in bed.  
“I considered it. But hey, you can’t go far. May as well have a chat.”  
“Kira’s a wonderful child.”  
“And you’d do good to keep your hands off of her,” Sarah took a step toward Rachel, eyebrows raised.  
“Mine are the most powerful hands in DYAD, Sarah.”  
“Precisely.”  
“You think I don’t care about that girl.”  
“Of course I bloody think that! You kidnapped her for Christ’s sake.” Sarah sat down roughly on the end of Rachel’s bed.  
“Sarah…” Rachel took a deep breath, and for the first time Sarah saw her shoulders loosen from their permanently fixed squareness. “DYAD won’t hurt her. Not physically. But they’ll take her away from the people who love her.”  
“You’re really selling the ‘let’s trust Rachel’ case, aren’t you?” Sarah rolled her eyes, but they met Rachel’s for a moment, just a moment and shining in that single hazel cornea, she saw her own reflection.  
“You know as well as I do how much they trust me here.”  
“Yeah…” Sarah replied slowly.  
“And how much power I have.” Rachel’s right eye was wet, not with irritation… but with tears. “Let me help,” she whispered.

* * *

 

“Jesus Christ, Sarah!” Rachel jolted to her feet, rushing to close the door to her office behind the brunette. “Hand over the pass.”  
Sarah grinned, passing Rachel the swipe card.   
“That’s the fifth this month you’ve stolen.” Rachel rolled her eyes, gently clipping Sarah over the back of the head.   
“Well you won’t give me one, so I gotta keep nicking them,” She replied with a grin, sitting down lazily in Rachel’s desk chair and starting to spin.  
“Sarah, stand up,” Rachel’s voice lowered, and her un-patched-over eye looked Sarah up and down, head to toe.  
“Rach, your bloody blinds are ope-”  
“Hush.” She pressed a manicured finger to Sarah’s lips. The brunette darted out her tongue, capturing Rachel’s finger and biting none-too-gently on it.  
“None of that today,” Rachel took a step away, biting back a smile, “when we’re in my office, I’m in charge.”  
“God I hate you, Rachel Duncan.”  
“The feeling is mutual, Sarah Manning.”  
And their lips met, mouths colliding hard enough to draw blood. At this point, Sarah didn’t know – or care, if Rachel was murmuring “fuck me” or “fuck you” into her ear. It meant the same thing, didn’t it? At least from Rachel.

The moment Sarah sat down in her car, she gasped.  
“Shit.” She picked up her cellphone, quickly pressing the speed dial. “Rachel?”  
“Sarah,” she replied, amused the woman was calling her so soon.  
“Are you alone in your office right now?”  
“Yes…” Where that question would lead, Rachel had no clue.  
“Good, because the last time I saw my underwear was when I flung them toward the window.”  
Rachel glanced up at the blinds behind her. A black, lace thong was dangling from one of the slats.   
“Well, Manning, they belong to me now.”

As Rachel placed the phone back in the cradle, her stomach sank. She reached up, hooking the thong on her middle finger and holding it delicately.  
She could still taste Sarah on her tongue, but there were bitter undertones. It wasn’t regret though, just… confusion.   
DYAD had blinded her with science… Sarah had blinded her, too. But not just with a pencil. Sarah was anything but test tubes and blood tests and probes. And, when one strips away the science and the power, who was Rachel? Who was she when Sarah was the one on top, when Sarah had her hand over Rachel’s mouth, when Sarah punctured her eye with a pencil, when Sarah made her scream in submission?  
Those screams that felt far too much like a surrender.  
But not to Sarah, never to Sarah. You can’t surrender to someone below you. But you can surrender to yourself. And that’s what Rachel did. Gave herself up in those tight little moments where all she could feel and taste and hear and see and smell was _Sarah Manning_ when the world was Sarah not DYAD, when Sarah remembered her though her own father didn’t, when Sarah was alive beneath her hands though everything else wilted at her touch.  
Sarah let her be weak. And she hated it. Or maybe loved it.  


* * *

 

“Kira!” Sarah scooped her daughter up into her arms, hugging her before turning to Cosima. “Rachel has the marrow processing, you’ll have the stem cells by Monday.”  
“I don’t know how you’re doing it, Sarah. I don’t. Rachel… we’ve never negotiated like this before.”  
“Probitch isn’t all bad.”  
Kira giggled. “Auntie Rachel likes you, mummy.”   
Cosima raised an eyebrow.  
“It’s sorted, Cos.”  
“What’s the catch? How are you getting all this from Rachel?”  
“I told you, I got it sorted.”

It was about Kira, right? And Cosima? Protecting them, keeping Alison’s family safe, keeping Kira away from DYAD, keeping Cosima alive. That’s why Sarah made this agreement with Rachel. That’s why Sarah wasn’t questioning Rachel’s double-agent status.  
Rachel was helping them because she wanted… what did Rachel want? A baby? She wanted to be a mother. Maybe she thought that if she could get close enough to Sarah, she could get her hands on Duncan’s genetic code, and if she did that she’d have a shot at having her own child…  
And Sarah herself had proven over the last year that the best way to get her to do what you want is to involve Kira.  
It’s why Sarah had Rachel on speed dial. For Kira.  
It’s why Rachel wanted Sarah around so often.  
It’s why Rachel was slowly turning her back on DYAD.  
For her own personal gain.  
Of course.  
Definitely.  
Sarah chose not to think about the way Rachel’s grip slackened around her wrists when she softened a kiss, or the days when they didn’t fuck at all… the times Sarah pointedly looked away as Rachel blinked back a tear, or clenched a fist to hide a quivering hand.  
Personal gain.  
That was all.

* * *

 

Look in the mirror, Duncan.  
Look just for a second.  
Who do you see staring back? The face you see hundreds of times a day, the face you see in the files of fifty different women, the face you see even in your sleep, the face burned into your one remaining retina when she grabs your face, makes you look, won’t let go…  
Doesn’t she understand?  
You don’t want to look. Not because you think she’s ugly… never, she’s stunning. It’s because you hate seeing everything you could have been, if it were her embryo that was given to Susan Duncan and yours to that Amelia woman…   
When you look at those files you see a thousand lives, a thousand potential worlds that could have been yours. If they’d picked up a different test tube, you would have been Danielle Fournier, or Alison Hendrix, or Jennifer Fitzsimmons. Maybe you would have been Sarah Manning.  
And that - God, anything - would be endlessly more beautiful that being “Self Aware”. Endlessly more fulfilling than being “Pro Clone”. Endlessly better than being “Super Bitch”, “Ms Duncan” or “Ma’am”.   
Anything would be better than this life she pretended to relish.  
  
So… what if she were Sarah? Or Alison? Or Cosima?  
The bottle of Scotch in her cabinet would take her there. There was marijuana in Cosima’s lab. She had inventories of all the medication Beth ever took. She knew everything they’d ever bought, ever owned, ever done… but she wasn’t them. Could never be them.

 

* * *

 

 

It was after midnight when Kira shook Sarah awake.  
“Mummy, mummy!”  
“What is it, monkey?” Sarah’s voice was thick with sleep.  
“Auntie Rachel.”  
“What?” Sarah was upright instantly.  
“She’s sad.”

Rachel was still in her business clothes, with perfect hair and pristine makeup, and tears dribbling down her face, even from under the patch over her eye. She was sitting, knees tucked up to her chest, stocking feet curled up on the carpet at the foot of Kira’s bed. At Sarah’s footsteps, she looked up, face softening.  
“Rachel…” Sarah sank to her knees in front of her clone. Gingerly, she took one of the woman’s icy hands in her own. Rachel’s hand relaxed, her shoulders dropped and a deep sob shook her body.  
“Rachel,” she let out a low laugh, “That’s me. I’m just me… Rachel, 386B01, monitored forever, clone. But I don’t want to…” she took a shaking breath and looked up, meeting the eyes of her clone. There was a manic fever in her face. Her mouth was set, one eye brimming with tears… and for the first time, her mascara was finally starting to run. “What is life like, Sarah?”  
  
You’d think, seeing a woman as powerful and domineering as Rachel Duncan cry would be uncomfortable at best… but she was barely a woman now. Hunched over, quivering, Sarah could see it now, the little girl.   
Lost, confused… cold, unloved for over a decade.  
Sarah crawled closer, tucking herself in behind Rachel and holding the – she now realised, slightly smaller – woman in her arms. She wrapped her tightly, cocooning this lost girl and stroking her hair behind her ear, so that she could rest her lips against it.  
“It’s what you want it to be. No matter what your bloody DNA says. Or the number on your test tube. You’re you. There’s only one.”   
Rachel exhaled deeply, leaning her head against the crook of Sarah’s neck, and finally closing her eye.

When Sarah woke, she was curled in her own bed – not on the floor near Kira’s – and Rachel was gone. Everyone else was sleeping soundly. Bleary, confused, Sarah looked toward her mirror. The only sign last night had even happened was a solitary smudge of red lipstick on her neck. And three, tear-stained words reverberating in her head.

“Ms Duncan?”  
“What, Martin?” Rachel swung round in her chair, looking at him imperiously.   
“Sarah Manning is here to see you.”  
“Oh goody,” her voice was dripping with sarcasm. “Well don’t just stand there, send her in.”  
“Ms Duncan is not in particularly good spirits today, Ms Manning,” Martin warned as he showed her into the office.  
“Martin, I heard that.”  
“Apologies, ma’am.”   
Rachel rolled her eyes, gesturing for him to shut the door and leave.  
“You didn’t steal a pass this time,” she observed coldly.  
“I was in a rush,” Sarah replied guardedly. Rachel just raised her eyebrows, not even bothering to look up at the brunette. “Hoped you’d deign to let me in, Rach…”  
Sarah approached nervously… last night happened, didn’t it? Then why was Rachel looking at her like she was a mere acquaintance? Possibly a mere nuisance that got in the way of far more important things.  
Then that glaze broke, layer by layer with ripples of tears that instantly spilt down her rouged cheeks.  
In an instant Sarah enveloped her, holding that small, quivering body tight against her chest. Mascara-blackened tears mingled with her own and then there was red lipstick on her face and her mouth and a shallow sigh and an urgent pair of manicured hands raked down her back and there was a fevered little gasp and… and then she melted.  
Rachel collapsed, unwound, unravelled, softened, relaxed… she fell to pieces and – for the first time in her life – left it to someone else to hold her together.  
  
An hour? Two? Rachel had no idea how long she stayed that time, feeling Sarah’s heart beat against her forehead.  
Last night Sarah had distracted her, shattered her in the way she wanted by fucking her pain into oblivion… Oblivion so intense reality couldn’t be brought back, not even by those three little words…  
She’d let herself relax in those odd, pressured moments between strokes and keens, those tight sparking seconds that lent themselves to the temporary insanity of speaking one’s true feelings.  
That wasn’t what this was, though.  
This wasn’t tight, or burning, or painful.  
This was release.

* * *

 

When Kira Manning woke up she was in a dim, cold, unfamiliar room.  
There was a scratchy blanket on her, and the only good thing was the toy puppy she still had tucked under her arm. Even the bed was lumpy and hard.  
And mummy wasn’t there.  
There was someone though… Kira peered over, and – upon noticing Kira was awake – the woman came closer.  
Rachel’s face was stern, cold and uncaring. Like the hall monitors at school. Rachel looked like she wanted to get Kira in trouble, even though she couldn’t remember anything she did wrong.  
“Hello, Kira.”  
Rachel turned her back, just for a moment, removing the green-cased clone-phone Sarah had gifted her from her pocket. Fingers shaking for the last time, she pressed the keys to send that final message.

 

Sarah Manning woke with a pit in her stomach, and a vibration against her thigh.  
She knew before she read the message what she’d find. What it would say. Who would be missing.

_"Perhaps it’s you, Sarah, who is easily blinded."_

 


End file.
